Reviews and commentaries on wine. The main, but not exclusive, emphasis is on wines of Burgundy and Germany.

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Domaine DUBLERE: 2013s from Cask

Domaine DUBLERE (Savigny-les-Beaune)

2013s from Cask

Blair
Pethel was an American business and politics journalist when he decided to give
it all up and in moved his family to Burgundy to make wine there. After a
year’s study at the lycée viticole in
Beaune, he started in 2004, not an easy year. But with good wines from
vineyards that he owns and rents, he has built up a successful
distribution network in many countries around the world.

The
cellar (next to which is a guest house available to rent) is technically
located in Savigny-les-Beaune, but it is just off the route nationale heading north and just beyond the Beaune boundary.
With sources heavily in Côte de Beaune regions that were hit by hail, Blair has
had losses of about 50% of a normal crop in both 2013 and 2014. Nevertheless,
as you’ll see, what remains is of high quality.

2013 Bourgogne blancLes Millerandes

This
wine comes from very close to the Meursault border. The wine is mineral, pure,
and racy, an outstanding Bourgogne. (88-91)

2013 MeursaultLes Crotots

The
vineyard here is just below the premier
cru Porouzots. This wine, too, is racy, pure, and mineral with excellent
acidity and a smooth texture. There’s more weight here than in the Bourgogne.
(88-92)

2013 Savigny-les-Beaune 1er Cru – Les Vergelesses

To
give an example of how dreadful the hail was in Savigny, Blair usually has 15
barrels (4500 bottles) of this wine, but in 2013, he has only 4 (1200 bottles).
White Savigny is too little known in the market, but worth investigating for
its attractive and very particular character. This wine has an elegant, buttery
nose. The mouth is mineral and tightly-wound with very good tension. (89-92)

2013 Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru – Les
Chenevottes

This
wine is stony and mineral in the nose, and racy, pure and stony in the mouth –
just as it should be. (89-92)

2013 Chassagne-Montrachet 1er Cru – Les Chaumées

This
wine, too, is mineral but shows more richness and less stoniness than the
Chenevottes. There’s some power here and good length. (89-92)

2013 Meursault 1er Cru – Les Charmes

This
wine is from the bottom part of the Dessuslieu-dit, generally considered better
than the Dessous lieu-dit.The wine has a complex almond-based
nose, and it the mouth it is racy and edgy with Meursault almonds and some
butteriness. (91-95)

2013 Nuits-Saint-Georges 1er Cru – Les Terres
Blanches

The
Terres Blanches vineyard here has an interesting history. Upslope from Aux
Perdrix, Les Forêts, and Les Didiers and south of Chênes Carteaux, it was
mostly recovered from the forest in the 1980s and originally classified as Côte
de Nuits-Villages, but then reclassified not as Nuits, but as Nuits 1er Cru. This
wine contains 15% Pinot Blanc. There’s some oiliness that the Pinot Blanc adds,
but the wine holds the raciness of Dublère’s style and has attractive lemon
flavors. (90-93)

2013 Corton-Charlemagne

This
wine is tightly-wound and concentrated, just as CC should be but all-too-often
isn’t. It shows hazelnut aromas and flavors, depth, and purity. This is topflight
Corton-Charlemagne. (93-96)

The
domaine has made excellent Chablis Les Preuses in the past from a vineyard that
was 90 years-old, but alas, those vines were ripped out for replanting.

2013 Chablis Grand Cru – Bougros

The
vines here are 20 years-old. The wine is vinified in tank and then transferred
to barrel without the lees. The resulting wine is very high in acidity, pure,
steely, and tightly-wound. (89-92)

2013 Chablis Grand Cru – Valmur

The
vines here are 50 years-old. The nose is lemony and steely, and the mouth
steely, austere, and very tightly-wound. It is classic young Chablis. (91-94)

Now
for the red wines:

2013 Savigny-les-BeauneLes Planchots du Nord

This
wine is pure, focused, and mineral in its red berry fruit, and there is great concentration
here. This is astonishingly good wine from the flatlands of Savigny. (90-93)

2013 Beaune 1er Cru – Les Blanches Fleurs

This
rarely-seen Beaune premier cru is
mineral and round with good concentration, finesse, and red currant fruit.
(88-91)

2013 Volnay 1er Cru – Les Pîtures

This
wine is round and pure with the structure one expects from vineyards up against
the Pommard border. There red berry fruit has lovely clarity. (91-94)

2013 Volnay 1er Cru – Les Taillepieds

This
wine shows Taillepieds structure but is much more compact than the Pîtures, as
one expects from Taillepieds. (88-92)

Finally,
from the Vosne slope of Nuits-Saint-Georges, this wine is round with good
structure. The Dublère lightness of touch is here, but there is also some flesh
to the red and dark fruit. Some crystallinity, too. (89-93)

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About Me

Currently, The Fine Wine Review specializes in wines of Burgundy and Germany, although some coverage is given to other areas, as time permits.
In addition to writing for The Fine Wine Review, Claude Kolm has also written for The World of Fine Wine and Taste Magazine.
The cover article that he wrote on the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and Aubert de Villaine for The World of Fine Wine can be found at: https://finewinemag.subscribeonline.co.uk/static_content/the-finewinemag/downloads/DRC_by_Kolm.pdf.

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ABOUT THE SCORES

Two forms of notation are used.

First, wines are rated on a scale of 0 to 100 points, credited as follows: 33 for aroma and bouquet; 33 for mouth; 10 for finish; and 24 for overall impression. The resulting scores can be broadly classified along a continuum, with scores in the upper 90s for truly exceptional wines, wines scoring below 80 being poor, and wines below 75 being unacceptable. A + indicates potential for improvement with age that cannot be judged accurately at this time. These scores have no inherent value and should be regarded simply as an ordering device to indicate an “objective” ranking of the wines, largely free from context.The scores may be considered to indicate a band of comparability from three to five points. Thus, a wine rated 88 would be comparable to wines rated between 87 and 89 or 86 and 90. A wine rated 89 would similarly be comparable to wines rated between 88 and 90 or between 87 and 91. (My experiences with blind tasting have shown that I rarely vary more than two points in my evaluations of a given wine.)

Wine that is not yet in bottle is given a range to the score which is then placed in parentheses.

However, such scores fail to take into account a type of wine’s maximum potential or the context of enjoyment of the wine. For example, a Muscadet may never score 90 points under this system, yet it may be a fine example of a Muscadet. Moreover, in many contexts, considering the accompanying food, occasion, and the company, and 86-point Muscadet, that is, a good Muscadet, may be an impeccable choice of wine, while a 96-point Montrachet would be a totally inappropriate choice. In a like manner, the reader may not always listen to music that is on an equal level, say, with Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, but in many contexts, he or she may in fact enjoy listening to the “less great” music more than the Ninth Symphony. Moreover, such scores wrongly imply a broad leveling of comparability, ignoring the fact that the Muscadet and Montrachet are different wines, creating different expectations and should not be judged as comparable to each other.

As a result, I have devised a second set of notations, on an A, B, C … scale to minimize confusion. This second set of notations is based on typicality of the wine and the expectations for that class or appellation of wine. Therefore, an 85-point Bourgogne Blanc may receive a mark of B+, while an 85-point Montrachet, from the same grape and also a white Burgundy, would receive a mark of C-. In some sense, this is a more “subjective” rating than the numerical system because the qualities of the wine are compared against an ideal, a more difficult task. However, I feel that these notations are the more meaningful for the enlightened consumer who can distinguish more than just white from red. The significance of the various marks can be summarized as follows:

A - An outstanding wine that deserves serious consideration when a wine of this type is sought.

B - A good wine that demonstrates characteristics of its class or appellation.

C - A wine that is acceptable to drink, but other wines showing more character of the class or appellation and better overall quality should be available.

D - A wine that is poor for its class or appellation and may contain some flaws.

F - An unacceptable wine.

I consider the letter grades to be better indicators of quality of a given producer and wine than the numerical scores.

The grades and scores do not take into account overall quality of the vintage. That is, two wines graded 87/B are judged to be of the same quality, even if one is from a great vintage and one is from a poor vintage. Also, scores do not consider prices or the relative values of the wines because the market is so changeable.

Where available, I give information indicating the lot of the wine that I tasted so that consumers can be sure they are buying the same wine reviewed. For most European wines, this is the lot number, preceded by an L, which is required by European Union law. The lot number most frequently is printed on the front label, but it also can appear on the capsule, back label, or stenciled on the bottle itself. Some U.S. importers ask that the lot numbers not be added to the wines exported to the U.S. In place of lot numbers, German wines carry an A.P. number, generally found on the main label.